Connect to Cameras

There are four approaches for connecting cameras to the Rekor Scout® Agent software. Regardless of which method you use, it is a good idea to first play the video stream in an external media player like VLC (click Media > Open Network Stream). This ensures the URL is correctly formatted and there are no firewall/network issues. If your stream will not play in VLC, the Rekor Scout Agent will not be able to connect to it either.

Auto Discovery

The Agent GUI has an auto-discovery feature that should work for cameras supporting the ONVIF communication protocol. Most major brands of IP cameras will fall under this category.

1. Launch the Configure Rekor Scout program.

2. Toggle the cameras tab on the left if it is not already active.

3. Click Add > Discover Devices.

4. Click the IP address matching your camera and you will be provided with a list of available substreams (different resolutions and/or frame rates).

5. Choose a substream, test, and save under a unique camera name.

Configure the agent from the web server

For this option, make sure your Rekor Scout Agent is registered with the cloud or an on-premise Rekor Scout web server (see Set Data Destination).

1. Login to the web server.

2. Navigate to Configuration > Agents.

3. Click the blue Configure button for the Agent you want to add the camera to.

4. Scroll to the Camera Stream Config section.

5. Select your manufacturer from the drop-down list or choose Generic URL.

6. Fill out the remaining fields, test the stream, and save the camera with a unique name.

Manually add URL in the Agent GUI

1. Determine the stream URL for your camera. The format varies by manufacturer but typically has the form rtsp://username:password@ip_address:port_number/some/unique/extension(may also start with http:// instead). The username and password portion may not be required for all cameras but typically comes with a simple factory default such as root:1234 or admin:password. For RTSP streams, the default port number is 554 while HTTP uses 80. If you do not know the /some/unique/extension portion, please review our templates for different camera manufacturers in approach 2.5, browse your camera’s configuration interface if available, or contact the camera manufacturer directly.

2. Follow approach 1, except instead of selecting Discover Devices choose Stream URL Manual.

Manually edit configuration files

1. Follow approach 3.1 to determine your camera’s stream URL

2. Open a blank text file in the Agent’s stream folder (located at /etc/openalpr/stream.d on Linux or C:\OpenALPR\Agent\etc\openalpr\stream.d on Windows)

3. Add the following lines to the file

   camera_id = [some unique number]
   stream = [Camera HTTP/RTSP stream URL]

4. Save with the file with a unique name and .conf extension (i.e. my_new_camera.conf)

5. Restart the Agent

   1. GUI: Services tab > Agent > Stop > Start

   2. Linux Terminal: sudo systemctl restart openalpr-daemon